Iditarod 2023: Tracking dropped sled dogs, a trail conditions update and a rookie’s lifelong dream

As the start of this year’s Iditarod Trail Sled Dog Race nears, mushers are bringing in their canine team members for veterinary exams, race organizers are planning ways to better track dogs returned to checkpoints and crews are shoring up the trail.

Thirty-three competitors — representing the Iditarod’s smallest field ever — are set to embark on a tour of Anchorage during Saturday’s ceremonial start before leaving the official starting line in Willow on Sunday.

We’ll provide updates throughout the race. For now, here’s a look at something new, what’s to come and what running the Iditarod means for one of this year’s nine rookies.

‘The Leon Incident’ means new satellite tracking of dropped dogs

This year, dogs dropped from mushing teams along the trail will be fitted with a satellite tracking device that will record their exact location.

The new technology comes as a result of what top race veterinarian Stuart Nelson calls the “Leon Incident.”

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During last year’s Iditarod, Leon — a leggy, wheat-gold husky on French musher Sébastien Dos Santos Borges’ rookie Iditarod team — slipped out of his collar at the Ruby checkpoint and ran off.

An extensive search followed, involving helicopter surveillance, snowmachines, efforts by fellow racer Nic Petit and fundraising by Iditarod fans and volunteers.

Leon turned up in the McGrath area in June, three months later and about 150 miles from where he went missing.

“He was living with somebody out in the Bush in a cabin,” Nelson said.

The Leon Incident convinced race officials they needed a better way to account for dogs returned to checkpoints, Nelson said.

“There are proactive and reactive plans,” he said. “And this was reactive.”

Nelson himself designed the prototype — a collar with a nylon sleeve holding a SPOT Trace Satellite Tracker device. Volunteers sewed the nylon sleeves.

Nelson cautioned that the idea is in its first year, and not all checkpoints or dropped dogs — typically a third of all dogs that go on the trail — will likely get one. But hopefully those at highest flight risk will.

“There’s some experimentation going on,” Nelson said. “It’s a prototype. But yeah, I think it’s a pretty good idea.”

The trail ahead: Plenty of snow cover but some trouble spots

Iditarod Trail Committee members gave an update on this year’s route Wednesday afternoon at a media briefing, passing along the latest information on snow and ice conditions from trail-breaking crews.

For the most part, according to race marshal Mark Nordman, conditions are good, with plenty of snow cover along much of the route but several trouble spots that could make for rugged mushing conditions.

The ascent up the Alaska Range, past Puntilla Lake and through the mountain pass itself on the way into the Rohn checkpoint, for most of the winter had thin snow cover, with alder branches and brush impeding travel for stretches.

“Iron Dog had a hard time going up to Rainy Pass Lodge,” Nordman said, referring to the snowmachine race that travels much of the same trail in the weeks before the Iditarod.

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Trail-crew saws and some recent snow have helped smooth things out, and according to Nordman, just a dozen ice bridges had to be added over open river crossings within Rainy Pass itself.

But after the notoriously technical section dropping down the Dalzell Gorge, the trail heading toward the tiny town of Nikolai will be tough on mushers.

“It’s probably the roughest trail we’ve ever had,” Nordman said of the stretch heading toward the upper Kuskokwim River. He attributed the conditions to a lack of traffic along the trail earlier in the winter, with lots of moguls and a poor base.

As 2023 is an odd year, the race will follow its southern route through the ghost town of Iditarod and on to the Yukon River communities of Shageluk, Anvik and Grayling; in even years the race follows the northern route through Galena. Snow depths in that area can vary wildly from year to year, and this year, Nordman said it is thin.

Heading down the Yukon and toward the coast, a recent warm spell with lashing rain caused some snow loss along portions of the trail. Nordman said the town of Kaltag recently hit 40 degrees. But in the days since then, everything has cooled down and refrozen.

Good sea ice conditions heading north up Norton Sound could make for a straight shot from Shaktoolik to Koyuk, avoiding the need for mushers to hug the coastline.

“All the way to Nome, we’re good,” Nordman said.

It’s the first time the race is traveling the southern route since 2019, and according to Nordman, people at checkpoints are excited for the race to come through with significantly relaxed pandemic precautions.

There’s “a really good feeling in the villages,” he said.

A rookie gets ready to tackle a lifelong dream

During his childhood in a suburb of Lansing, Michigan, Hunter Keefe was preoccupied — maybe obsessed — with the Iditarod. In first grade, his teacher helped him check out all the Iditarod books. In fourth grade, he dressed as an Iditarod musher for Halloween, complete with a handmade entry bib his grandmother made him.

Now he’s about to race the Iditarod for the first time. Keefe gently unloaded his dogs from a trailer at Wednesday’s veterinarian checks at Iditarod headquarters near Wasilla.

“I’ve only had one plan since being a kid,” he said. “Some kids dream of being a firefighter, or a nurse or a doctor. I wanted to be a dog musher. There is no Plan B.”

[Teen who beat some of mushing’s big dogs tops junior field to earn spot at Iditarod ceremonial start]

As soon as he could, he moved to Alaska to work with mushers, first for Petit in Girdwood and Trapper Creek. During the pandemic, he worked construction in the Wasilla area and moved in with mushing luminaries Raymie and Barb Redington. He trained hard, even with another job, said Barb Redington.

“We’d get up and the coffee’s made and he’s gone to work,” Redington said. He worked hard, Redington said. Keefe notched some top five finishes in shorter races, including winning the Goose Bay 150. He hadn’t quite planned on running the Iditarod this year, but while giving mushing tours in Girdwood with Redington’s son Ryan Redington — who finished seventh in the 2021 Iditarod and is running it again this year — the idea took root.

“Every day Ryan would say, yep, we’re both signing up,” he said.

Keefe said his team is young and a little goofy, especially “the Beatles” — sled dogs Ringo, Paul, George and John.

He was looking forward to a trail and a race he’d been thinking about for most of his life.

“It’s time.”